A gay pride march turned violent in Podgorica, Montenegro, as police clashed with anti-gay extremists who meant to disrupt one of the first gay pride marches in the region.

March organizer Danijel Kalezic said the police protection allowed about 150 gay rights activists to march peacefully through the city. However, they were countered by about 1,500 anti-gay extremists who threw stones and firebombs at the officers protecting the march participants.

Police said upwards of 60 people were injured during the melee, 20 of whom were officers and 40 coming from the so-called “hooligan groups.” About 60 extremists were arrested.

Though the government of Montenegro, a country of about 600,000 people, publicly supports tolerance, the citizens obviously feel differently, as this is not the first time a gay pride event in Montenegro has been met with violence and chaos. Back in July, extremists chanted “kill the gays” and pelted rocks and bottles at participants in their first ever pride event.

Although anti-gay behavior persists at the events, Kalezic doesn’t see the most recent march as a failure, despite the violence that occurred. “As of today, gay people are no longer invisible in Montenegro,” Kalezic said. “From today, these streets are ours as well.”

Sad. We don’t know how lucky we are… assuming we’re not in Montenegro… or Russia… or…

Oct 22, 2013 at 12:27 am · @Reply ·

Pistolo

People keep saying our generation (the millennials) is more accepting but what they don’t realize it’s more complicated than that. Now that we can have marches and gatherings, now that we can organize ourselves on a global level through the internet and social media we have a lot of exposure and in some ways that endangers us on a greater scale. There should be a lot more coverage of the treatment of LGBT people across the globe.

This is like some Nazi bull, except it’s all over the world. It’s crazy.